Montré Burton is hot this summer, and things are about to get hotter for him as he appears in what could be his break out role in one of the most highly anticipated television shows of the season. Burton has played a major part in picking the finalists for the summer reality show closely linked with Disney’s every popular High School Musical, which premieres tonight, July 20, 2008. High School Musical has been seen by 250 million people world wide, and the sequel, High School Musical 2 was seen by more than 195 million.
Montré joined the production working as a faculty member, which was essentially a talent scout at first, then a teacher. Disney’s High School Musical: Get in the Picture will award one grand prize winner the chance of a lifetime. The winner will be featured in a music video to be shown in the end credits of Disney’s High School Musical 3, due out in October, and will also receive an exclusive talent hold agreement from ABC, and a contract to record two singles with Walt Disney Records.
Hosted by Nick Lachey, the series shows the finalists from regional competitions competing for the grand prize. It runs Sundays and Mondays at 8:00PM for three weeks, then continues Mondays at 8:00PM through mid-September. Six faculty members, including Burton scoured the nation looking for talented individuals between 16 and 22 years old, (though the oldest competitor was 18) holding open calls in every place imaginable, as well as visiting various high schools and artistic academies throughout the country. The six also served as mentors for the young talent, helping train them to further hone their skills.
Montré recently stopped by TV Talk to talk about the show and his role in picking the finalists, as well as the successes and challenges he has had in his life.
Previously, Montré guest starred on HBO’s Entourage, My TV Network’s Wicked Wicked Games and FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. But for some members of his family, this is truly his big break. “My nieces and nephews all think I’m cool now. I’ve been in Entourage, and gone to Europe and done all of this other stuff, and they weren’t interested in that, but now I’m a cool guy to them,” he laughed.
When he was approached for the role of a faculty member, Montré wasn’t told what the project was, but rather that it just required someone with multiple talents, and with experience working with young people, and training them in the arts. It doesn’t hurt that he is himself, a fan of the High School Musical movies. “When I actually watched the movie, I was so hooked! It was ridiculous. I was like, wow! Why am I so hooked on this thing? All these little kids were running around talking about this and now I totally get it,” he says.
The six faculty members for the series were split into two teams and sent out to scout for talent across the country. Three were sent to the eastern US and three to the west. “And I'm one of the East, representing my home region, because I'm from Virginia, so I was excited to be an east coast Faculty member,” he said. Not sure what to expect, Burton was surprised to find that some of the best and most talented came from some of the most unexpected small towns in the country. “what we discovered is that in all these small little towns, they had all these people who didn't have an artistic outlet. What this show does is it gives them an outlet, gives them a way to express who they are. They've got raw talent. They have a gift,” he says. “We step in and cultivate, and help them to grow and be that best artist that they can be. And that's wonderful to see. I need someone doing that for me now,” he laughed. “What we do is nurture, encourage, challenge these new young artists. Ultimately, Disney is looking for their next star. These kids don’t realize what a big deal this is for them,” he said. Burton traveled to Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, and Missouri for his part of the search. “I literally would go to the small towns to discover. We go around to schools to watch them perform or the dance academies, or the arts academies, or sometimes it was an open mike night. Wherever talent was to be found in these small towns, that's where I would go. Some of these towns had a population of maybe one,” he said.
Once the best talent in an area was discovered, Burton and the other faculty members were responsible for sending them on to the next level. “The ones that were good enough, and I okayed them, and I'd send them to the semi finals, at Disney World. The people who were great, we'd send them on to be a finalist in Salt Lake,” he said.
Once the talent was discovered, the training continued though. “Now, they are in courses from a music and dance and theater conservatory pretty much, where they are literally acting, singing, dancing, every day”, he said. “This show is really going to change people's lives. We have gone around and discovered talent that if it had not been for us, they would have gone on to be doctors, lawyers, nurses, educators, whatever, which is fine.”
Montré got his own start in the artistic endeavors at an early age. He was a member of Bank Street Memorial Baptist Church, grew up performing in church every Sunday. At a young age, he joined The Hurrah Players Youth & Family Theatre Company, where he starred in Pinnochio, Once Upon A Mattress, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. “I was a musical theater boy. I started out, I was a little church choir boy, and then I went to a youth academy theater company in Virginia, so I was a little musical theater boy, 12 years old, doing my musicals,” he said.
Though it was sometimes a challenge to persue his chosen profession as a young man. “In Virginia that could be a little difficult, because people were like, boy, why do you run around skippin' and dancin' and all of that? Don't you wanna go play football? I'm like, uh, no!”, he laughed. In high school he attended the Virginia Governor’s School for the Arts where he graduated with honors with a concentration in theatre, and starred in such productions as The Misanthrope, Anything Goes, Museum, and 42nd Street. “It's one of the most elite performing arts high schools in the state of Virginia, and I focused in theater. You pretty much eat, sleep, drink, breathe musical theater every day, and I did that for four years. And then when I left there, I was like, I want to do classical theater for the rest of my life,” he said. He then graduated from Old Dominion University with a B.A. in Theatre Arts, appearing in Angels in America, The Hairy Ape, and Juxtapose.
Finally, Montré attended the Florida State University/British American Drama Academy in London, England with renowned classical artist Norman Ayerton, former head of London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts and theatre faculty of The Juilliard School. “So I moved to England, and I was at academy, and I was studying, performing, doing my thing, and while I was there though, I realized that, you know what, I don't really want to just do this for the rest of my life. I don't want to only do one thing,” he said. “Classical theater is clearly a part of me, but I didn’t only want to do that forever. I thought I’d end up doing Shakespeare my whole life. I do sing, I do dance. I do enjoy musical theater, and I'm not ashamed of it. So, while I was there, it was great, and that helped me to realize that you want to do it all.”
Though his plans almost changed. In 1998, Montré was diagnosed with benign central neurocytomas, a rare central nervous system tumor which very few people had at that time and was told that he would only have two weeks to live if it was not immediately found and removed. “When I found out that I had two brain tumors, it kind of threw everything off course. I originally found out on a Thursday, the brain surgery was on a Monday. I was having headaches and told my family that I needed to go see the doctor. So I did and they did a cat scan, and it wasn’t clear, so they did an MRI. That was on a Thursday and the surgery was on a Monday,” he said.
Burton is thankful that the experience was over so quickly. “I think that it was good that I was young. I was 19 and it happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to get weird, and get crazy, and freak out. I had literally just gotten back to the US, Thursday I was told the news and Monday I had the surgery. Usually, they’ll try radiation first, and if that doesn’t work they’ll try chemo, and if that doesn’t work, surgery. At that time I had pretty much a four day turn around, just getting off the plane and going through passport and customs issues. Then shaving my head, transferring back out of school, cancelling all my stuff, then having surgery so quickly. It was probably good that I wasn’t aware of what was happening,” he said.
Proving his is a true survivor, Montré transformed his experience into strength and pressed forward in achieving his dreams as an entertainer. “That literally changed my life. Getting the true fundamentals of life, but I really had to focus on what's important in life. I've been really fortunate and blessed...it's all about being the best person that you can be. You can only be the best artist you can be once you have become the best person that you can be,” he said. People still comment on his cheerful out look on life. “That’s why people are like, “You’re so happy, you’re so full of life”. I’m like, “yeah dude, try going through what I went through and you would be too,” he says.
Montré is using this experience to help other young people who may be going through similar things. “There are literally kids in the united states that have gone through what I’ve gone through literally 25 times. By the age of 16, they’ve gone through it 25 times. What happens is they become so affected because they can’t go to school, they have a hard time making friends, and they can’t drive. But they are the happiest kids in the world, like they hadn’t been through anything, and they are such pure joy, it’s so refreshing to see. When you deal with people like that, you’re like, “I’m fine, nothing is going to bother me, and it’s all good,” he says.
Burton will next be seen starring in two upcoming independent features Transdermal and All the Days Before Tomorrow, which are both slated to be released later this year. It was while he was in Nebraska filming Transdermal that he had his first ever brush with racist attitudes, while eating at a restaurant. “We’d finished dinner, and she wouldn’t take my plate. I thought maybe she was just busy and would get to it, but I tried to hand it to her and she wouldn’t take it. She didn’t want to take the plate that a black man had eaten off of. She just said someone will be along to get that.” Though shocked and disappointed with this brush with racism, Montré didn’t let the experience affect him for the long run.
Until recently, Burton had been splitting his time between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, Utah, where High School Musical: Get in the Picture is shooting. The finale episode will be filmed this week in Los Angeles, and the winner revealed on the final episode in September.
